


The Sound of Silence

by Linane



Series: The Sound of Silence [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soulmates, fili and kili are not related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5842531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/pseuds/Linane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/133830919305/we-challenge-you-fiki-fandom">FiKi December Challenge </a>- Day 29.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Silence

There were no signs.

Nothing at all to suggest a shift in the world, as if a different setting was switched on. Hundreds of millions of people wake up one bleary October morning and find themselves unable to utter a single word. Some are even rudely interrupted mid-sentence and will never get to finish it. From those ripped conversations it’s deduced that the Event took place between 4:23 and 4:24 GMT, worldwide.

Later, it becomes known simply as The Great Silence.

Following the initial wave of besieged hospitals, crisis management directives and in some areas even military presence and curfew, comes the time of searching for answers.

Humanity turns to reason first.

In doing so, the greatest finger-pointing exercise of all time begins.

Anything and anyone gets blamed – from cosmic radiation to psychological impact of welfare state economy. Use of biological weapons, shift in the magnetic field, the Freemasons, pollution, mass hypnotism, ozone layer, a virus, even the victims themselves, as if it was possible to coordinate and coax this many people into permanent, synchronised silence. Ultimately, there is no proof that would enable any one of those theories to present a stronger case than the others.

Electro-stimulation of different parts of the brain, surgery to replace the larynx with an artificial one or a transplant, speech therapy, all fail.

Without knowing the cause, there is no cure.

Science comes short.

More ripples.

There are precious few conclusions, reported all over the media as if they could ever be enough to account for everything that has been lost.

Every human being is born with a limited number of words.

Once that limit is reached, no further verbal communication is possible, not even screams or grunts, or any other noise.

Everybody has a different limit and there is no way to predict what it might be.

But just as the world is ready to plunge itself into despair, something else becomes clear, slowly, over time, like a fading bruise revealing new skin over an injury. All around the world reports appear of people miraculously regaining their voice in the presence of another person, a very _specific_ other person, when speaking directly to them. Once all the fraudsters are discounted, there is a new theory, which quickly becomes fact:

We are each born with a Soulmate, and the words spoken to that one person never run out, even if you have no words left for anyone else.

An out clause, as it were.

People call it The Small Mercy.

Science gives one last nod: after several days of furious calculations, using Earth’s most sophisticated computers, and some two billion personal units, hooked up through the internet, one nervous-looking statistician finally declares:

_For this to be true, it must be assumed that we each meet our Soulmate at least once within our lives. Then it’s just a question of whether we follow the spark of attraction or not._

A new wave of terror because that implies some sort of a cosmic plan, perhaps even a _destiny_ and several other things that people, and Western economies, based around the concept of personal achievement, are not at all ready to contemplate.

The New Universal Law of Attraction.

Faced with the impossible, religion doesn’t fare much better than science.

Islam: _God’s will_.

Buddhism: _Look inwards_.

Catholicism: _God wants you to remember love_.

That last one causes some confusion, when within days, it becomes obvious that homosexuals are just as capable of being each other’s Ones as the straight people; in fact, the entire Spectrum is perfectly capable of _remembering love_ , and it’s rather difficult to back out of the strong stance of divine intervention the Church has adopted.

Sexual orientation, or even romantic attraction has got nothing to do with having a Soulmate.

It takes two weeks for the Vatican to call a synod, and vote through, within a narrow margin, a brand new dogma, first one within a hundred and twenty years:

_All are free to love as their Creator intended._

Church weddings are suddenly available to a much larger percentage of society than before.

For a few days the world remembers how to smile.

But by then, the reality has irrevocably changed and things are only gaining momentum.

Mass demonstrations, economies collapsing, horrific wave of suicides – chaos.

Three years before the world remembers itself.

It emerges as an entirely new creature.

The gap between the rich and the poor has increased ten-fold. Unemployment soars, but there are decent-paid jobs, if you’re willing to embrace the silence much sooner than you’d need to. Politicians with voice-doubles. Teachers, public services, health sector. Councillors: hugely-in-demand, trained en-masse during a brief course. Retirement age for some professions goes down to 40.

And speech - a universal skill we all possess, ready to be sucked dry by the system, and discarded like an empty can of soda, increasing the huge masses of –

_The Voiceless._

On the other hand, mute support groups and new, hugely popular jobs created, especially within businesses, in pairs. Co-workers that also happen to be each other’s Ones are more dependable, less likely to experience a breakdown and simply easier to communicate with.

Sign language becomes obligatory as early as the primary school and is commonly used in everyday situations, even among those who still can speak: _hello, please, thank you, sorry_.

Technology helps as well, adapting, like it always does, and fortunes are amassed on the Voicebox technology, type-to-speech phone apps and various display gadgets, whilst the poor revert back to the basic things like whiteboards and notepads.

Overall, the world is a much quieter place.

There is no consensus about finding your Soulmate, but it is certainly the most widely-discussed subject in the years to follow.

Some suggest that to increase your chances, you should meet, and perhaps sleep with as many people as possible, causing the dating websites’ popularity to explode to an unprecedented scale. Others believe in the opposite, because if the Law is true, then surely it would be easier to select your One from a handful of candidates.

And the flip side: as much as 70% of all marriages break up and within a year. Getting a divorce is just a matter of filling in an online questionnaire and pressing a button. There are families which choose to go on, even when it becomes obvious that the parents are not each other’s Ones.

Not everyone welcomes the change, not everyone cares. Rebels, who live in a self-imposed silence until they can find someone _they_ like for themselves and offer them the words they have left. Parents, forever telling their kids off for wasting words. Shady cults believing that one day the whole planet will be silent.

TV shows aiming to help you choose your Soulmate and anti-depressants sold over the counter, like painkillers.

People’s trust in each other is perhaps the biggest victim of the Great Silence.

Kili is seven when the Event takes place.

He doesn’t notice at first, at least not until he is faced with silent teachers at school and finds his mother sobbing silently in front of the telly. His parents go on for 8 more months, quietly, stubbornly, for their little boy.

And then it all falls apart like a house of cards.

Despite that Kili refuses to count his words. He has too much of a wild spirit in him, he’s too curious of life to keep his silence. He doesn’t want to overthink it, but he is, still, something of a romantic at heart, and despite everything, he hopes that one day he might be happy. When that day comes, he will love with all his heart. If it never comes, one day he will simply switch his phone to text-to-speech setting and perhaps buy one of those new neuro-link voice boxes, that will make him sound like a robot, but at least he will be heard.

Overall, Kili considers himself lucky. He’s one of the few people who manage, somehow, to combine work with what they love.

He’s a licenced wildlife photographer for National Geographic.

The fact that said wildlife is rarely in a talkative mood is just a bonus for Kili, as he happily holes up in little disguised shelters, spending hours, days and weeks, watching birds of prey, wild, proud predators, or tiny, resourceful creatures go about their lives in front of his lens.

His job pays well-enough that Kili can even afford a flat in the inner city, two bedrooms for when his mother comes to visit – a luxury offset by it being in a slightly dodgy area.

There are homeless. Homeless and Voiceless hanging out in groups in the dimly-lit alleyways by the improvised fires.

Kili offers change, leftover food, sometimes a spare blanket, on a cold night. It’s not much, and it doesn’t turn him into a saint, but it’s the right thing to do, and one day he might find himself among them too.

Nobody’s certain of the future.

But tonight, as Kili returns from yet another expedition, he only has a few coins of foreign currency in his pockets and he’s long since wolfed down the overpriced cheese sandwich at the airport. So he strides on, driven by the promise of hot tea and a shower to make him feel vaguely human again.

Lost in his thoughts, he nearly walks into a stumbling blond, coming from the opposite direction. For a second he thinks he’s being mugged, but no, his wallet is still there. He signs a quick apology and moves on.

Home.

Home is wonderful and familiar, a little oasis in a city he’d otherwise rather abandon altogether.

Kili is surprised when he finds himself still awake at 1 a.m. but he supposes his body clock is still on Malaysian time, where he’d just about be thinking about dinner. He’s even more surprised when, attracted to his bedroom window by the brutal pattering of the cold winter rain, he notices the blond from earlier, still out there, huddled by the skip and covered by a soaked-through piece of cardboard.

 _He will freeze to death_ , Kili realises with quiet certainty, remembering the TVs at the airport flashing frost warnings for tonight.

Is the man’s life worth the risk?

Kili would like to say that he has no problem answering this question, but he’s been robbed twice before, once at a knife-point, when he allowed a stranger into his home. People are desperate, sometimes desperate enough to kill, even for things that really shouldn’t be worth it.

He hesitates and some part of him wishes he never looked out of the window in the first place –

Kili gives himself a mental slap. There would be a body in the morning, where a life once was and Kili wouldn’t be able to look himself in the eye.

 _Decency will get you killed_ , he thinks, grabbing an umbrella and throwing a coat over his worn sweatpants to rush outside.

“You will die here, tonight, unless you find shelter,” Kili blurts out, when faced with the silent stare of the bright, unfocussed eyes.

There is no response of course, but there’s something about the way the blond watches him, intelligence, curiosity and perhaps a little bit of a statement, when he makes no move.

“Look, I can’t just leave you here. Have you nowhere to go?” he asks on a frustrated huff and immediately regrets it. It’s worse than he thought: the man is visibly trembling - it’s obvious that he wouldn’t chose to stay curled up into a ball by Kili’s skip if he had an alternative. “You can stay the night at my place, if you like,” he offers.

The blond looks away and seems to try and slink further into the shadows.

“I’m serious. Frost is coming, you don’t stand a chance. I am _trying_ to save your life!” Kili frowns, stubbornly extending a hand and he has been told before that he comes across a bit intense at times.

But whether it’s his words or tone of voice, it seems to work, when one icy-cold hand tries to close clumsily around his own.

And that is how the blond stranger ends up in Kili porch, looking ready to fall asleep on the spot, still trembling violently and dripping water all over Kili’s floor.

The silence is deafening.

Kili should be used to interacting with the Voiceless by now, but everybody is different, and those on the streets have often never learned to cope.

The man is perhaps a little bit older than Kili, shorter, but broader in the shouldrs, and it’s only now, in the proper light, that Kili notices his piercing blue eyes.

His first thoughts are of photography. The way his face would look, would tell its own story worth a thousand words, in the right light.

Because the blue eyes shine with fever, but also with furious thirst for life.

They are staring at each other for long, slow minutes, while the Voiceless shivers and takes shaky breaths and stays rooted to the spot.

It’s the chattering of his teeth that finally pushes Kili into action, ushering his guest into the kitchen, before rushing into the bathroom himself.

“I will run you a hot bath and find you some dry clothes. Help yourself to some tea – we have to warm you up from the inside as well as outside,” Kili babbles, trying to fill the silence for the both of them. “You’ll find some teabags in the second cupboard from the window, but there’s no milk I’m afraid – I haven’t had the time to pick up the groceries since I’ve come back.”

When Kili comes back into the kitchen, he finds his visitor clutching uselessly at the closed tin of tea with his shaking hands and staring at the large-scale photograph of a fox staring curiously at the viewer from the wall.

“I’m a wildlife photographer, and this little buddy felt particularly friendly,” Kili explains with a small smile, despite the flash of guilt when he takes the tin from the nerveless fingers.

There is no response once again and Kili busies himself pouring two steaming mugs and brewing the tea, quietly contemplating if it’s _more_ likely that he will be robbed, now that it’s clear that there’s an expensive photography equipment in the house, or _less_ , because the stranger knows something personal about him now.

“Do you need help holding –“ he trails off uncertainly, faced with burning blue eyes again and something like a flash of defiant pride.

“You’re judging me. No different than the rest of them, and you’ve already decided that I must be broken somehow to end up where you found me. I was _thirteen_ when I lost my voice! I never stood a –“

The blond freezes as if he’s been slapped, one hand flying to his throat.

How do you arrange for your thoughts to be turned into words and sentences and actually come out? How do you stop it, when for years it makes no difference?

“Is that the truth?” Kili’s voice is quiet, as he carefully puts the mug back on the counter. “Or are you lying to me, because if you are –“

“It’s the truth,” shaky and hoarse and the blond takes a step back.

 _We each meet our Soulmate at least once within our lives_ , flashes in Kili’s mind, as he takes in the exhausted, dirty face once more.

“I’m sorry –“ the man whispers, backing away again.

“My name is Kili,” the words stop him dead in his tracks and Kili knows his heart has decided. “I have weird sleeping patterns, I like apples and books, I am a hopeless cook, I don’t like baseball and I will never iron my clothes on principle. You are my Soulmate and I could never watch you go out there like this again.” He moves slowly to stand in front of his guest and gently wrap both his hands around the hot mug, enclosing them within his own to steady them. “Please. What’s your name?”

“Fili,” the blond says at last, and he looks like he’s been in a battle over this single word.

“Fili…” it rolls off Kili’s tongue almost like his own name, but different enough to cause a delicate shiver of excitement. “Will you let me offer you a hot bath, a warm bed in the spare bedroom and a chance to continue this conversation in the morning?”

Fili visibly hesitates, but eventually nods and Kili thinks that it will take a good few years for the old habits to die.

“Right!” Kili practically beams at him, heart singing and he can see how this force of emotion would be like a blow to humanity when it manifested.

It isn’t even about romantic attraction, although Kili is falling, and falling hard for the intelligent words and observant eyes; it’s about a sense of belonging, and a peculiar feeling that everything will be _alright_ from now on, that they can have this _together_.

“Wait here, I just need to grab fresh towels from my bedroom and then I’ll leave you to it,” he offers, already wondering where his towels ended up after the wash two days before he left.

When he re-emerges from his bedroom with a triumphant grin, the flat is empty.

Kili panics, until he spots the familiar figure walking away, nearly at the end of the alleyway.

He runs after him, of course he does.

He loses sight of Fili for a moment, when he turns the corner and Kili’s heart pounds furiously to the rhythm of _this one or no one_.

As Kili turns the same corner himself, he’s presented with a view of his Soulmate backing away slowly from three burly-looking men blocking his exit.

“Look, what we have here,” one of them leers. “And here we thought we’d have trouble when boss said ‘find him or don’t come back. Where’s the money, pretty boy?”

Fili shakes his head frantically and takes another step back, but when he hears Kili call “is there a problem?” behind him, his whole body tenses and his posture changes. He drops lower, spreads his feet wider and it looks like he’s making a conscious effort to stop his trembling.

“Hey Bert, looks like the little runt is readying himself for a fight.”

They laugh, but Fili isn’t easily provoked.

“I say we take his tongue as a deposit, and the rest of him to pay it back,” the one in the back snarls and something shining darkly appears in his hand. “You know they’re better without the tongue.”

“How much does he owe you?” there’s no fear when Kili steps in front of the blond, trying to sway the odds in their favour.

“Why? You got cash to pay for him?”

Fili yanks him back hard by his coat and whirls him back behind himself just in time to avoid a right hook aimed at Kili’s nose. Dodging himself, he manages a swift punch to the kidneys of the first attacker, only to stumble back when the second one catches him hard in the temple.

“That is quite enough heroics for now. He’s ours.”

The shot sounds at exactly the same time as Fili’s panicked scream of “Kili, no!”

A few years back a new trend swept across some of the major cities, where people flooded tattoo parlours to have last words of their loved ones inked on their body, to remind them how precious the words have become.

In that first, stunned moment of silence, when Fili sways backwards heavily, irrationally, the only thing Kili can think of is that these _can’t possibly_ be his One’s last words.

It’s been nowhere near enough.

It was just a moment.

It would be a cruel joke if –

 _It’s just a graze_ , Kili tells himself as lights in the blocks around them flicker on and the three thugs start backing away fast.

By the time Fili lands heavily in his arms, Kili is well on his way into an argument with any god that might be listening.

He won’t let him go.

He won’t let his One die for him.

_This cannot be it._

 

\---

 

_18 months later, Northern Tanzania._

 

The blaring sun of the Serengetti is in Fili’s eyes, making him squint.

He’s just considering another swig of water from the canteen, when his gaze registers a movement to their right, making him nudge Kili.

“Words…” Kili growls softly under his breath, not moving his lens even a millimetre.

Fili huffs. “Gazelle,” he tries.

“Nuh-uh.”

“Topi…?”

“Topi,” Kili agrees, finally moving the camera and sending him a grin, which Fili only recognises because of the movement of muscles in his cheek.

Fili sighs, offering a slow, dimpled smile of his own – the one he knows Kili will notice with the corner of his eye and will make him take shitty photos – before picking up a pair of binoculars once again.

 

\---

**Author's Note:**

> This is a strange little AU, which I've dreamt up before Christmas. Perhaps a little bit naive, but I thought the concept was interesting enough to play around with it.
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr.](http://linane-art.tumblr.com/)


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